


marionnette

by EliUndertrance (ope_ope_oppenheimer)



Series: birdcage [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Blood and Violence, Brothers, Child Abuse, Control, Domestic Violence, Father-Son Relationship, M/M, Sadism, Torture, and doflamingo pretends to be his dad instead of his brother, au where rosi is born in the north blue, doflamingo is 10 years older than him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:56:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29599338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ope_ope_oppenheimer/pseuds/EliUndertrance
Summary: As his father's son, Rosinante tries to do what he can.
Relationships: Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante & Original Male Character, Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante & Sengoku the Buddha, Donquixote Doflamingo & Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante, Donquixote Doflamingo/Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante
Series: birdcage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2136894
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	marionnette

Rosinante’s earliest memories are rose coloured.

Coral seawater and crushed pink shells had their hues rejuvenated by blood. Specks of it got into his leather shoes, and Rosi’s stomach turned as he buried his face into pink feathers. 

His father laughed, ruffling his golden hair with his heavy palm. Red smeared across gold, and Rosi knew he would have to wash his hair along with the same water he washed the ingots with. His father placed the sunglasses over his eyes.

His smile was brighter, redder than dusk, the neat rows of carnivorous teeth more violent than the carnage that he turned him back towards.

“See, Rosi? Not so bad anymore, is it?”

Through red glass, the men look drowned. 

* * *

Maroon turned bright red, and the shell cracked like bones in his father’s hand, and he hummed happily, even as chips of the crustacean’s shell hit Rosi in the face. The boy pulled at the tendons of the claw he pawned off of the plate, already hollow, and he studied it as it opened, closed. No longer bound.

Dipping the meat in hot butter, his father pressed a bite into Rosi’s mouth, and he felt the fat thicken in his throat, before he swallowed. They feasted like this every night, an entire family gorging themselves on the plunder. The fire is warm, and beneath the white tablecloth, he knew the wooden table worn on one corner, scarred on the other.

They were playing a knife game, rhythmically sticking the sharp object between their fingers, singing along with a rhyme. Faster and faster, going around like a lazy Susan. 

“Goshdarnit!”

Lao G flinched at the small cut on his ring finger. The red stain looked like tomato sauce, and Rosi knew it’d be just as hard to wash out.

“Someone needs practice.” Diamante laughed, taking the knife away. It was a new one, freshly sharpened, “any closer and you would have lopped a finger off.”

At some point, they dragged other people into their game too, for practice. Prisoners had their cuffs pinned to the table while they splayed their fingers as wide as possible, recited what they loved to do with them while they sobbed. A ringed one was cut off, either deliberately or accidentally just for the fun of it.

One was pushed forward, and he wasn’t scared. Diamante threatened to cut off all his fingers.

“Does a world a disservice if you do.”

They laughed at his arrogance, made him show them what was so special about his hands. Rosinante looked upon his own, and the clumsy lobster claw. They moved past him to the piano no one touches, and Rosi was glad he looked up when he heard the first untuned note.

It wasn’t anything special. The musician wasn’t trying to save his own life. If he was smart, he would have played something like “Bink’s Booze,” and livened everyone’s mood enough to distract him.

But instead of Bink’s Booze, it was something technically difficult and awfully sad. Rosi watched his fingers fly across the keyboard, dance on the ivory keys like butterflies. Diamante hated it, thought he was being smart. Giolla appreciated it, asked if they could keep him as a musician, but they slammed the piano’s lid shut, and pressed his manacled hands to the scratched varnish.

Rosi looked to his Father, who said nothing, before stepping forward, swiping his Father’s steak knife from the table.

He put his small hand down with enough force next to the man’s to make Diamante flinch. Made Trebol and Pica look to Doflamingo in uncertainty.

“Oi, what are you doing, little master?”

Rosi said nothing, and raised the knife. It was obvious.

They all wanted this to stop. But it was Diamanté’s pride that was being challenged, and Doflamingo did not give him the order to retreat. They all knew how clumsy Rosinante was, with all the scrapes on his arms and his knees.

“ _There's an old tradition, a game we all can play…_ ” Rosi began, slow as a lullaby, and no one could reprimand him for it. No one dared laugh as he hit the spaces between his small tiny fingers, the blade itself thicker and wider than his thumb.

Diamante swallowed as the song continued, seemingly growing smaller as Rosi sang it faster, unsmiling, the blade moving along with the rhythm. Rosinante’s hand seemed to fly, the thud of the knife carving six stars into the black wood. Doflamingo’s grin stretched wider.

“ _I’m picking up the speed, and if I hit my fingers, then my hand will start to—_ “

Rosinante flinched, holding his hand. Red dripped onto the piano, colouring the pale stars he had just carved, turning one to Mars.

Everyone held their breath as they looked to Doflamingo, who stood up. The musician stared at Rosinante, finally seeing the resemblance between him and the Heavenly Demon. Rosinante’s bloody hand was yanked forward. Just a cut on the pinky, but Doflamingo clicked his tongue. Strings were already wrapping around it, forming makeshift bandages.

“Giolla.”

And already, the woman was rushing to the kitchen for a first aid kit.

Rosinante felt his Father’s hand on his shoulder, before he spoke to him, past him.

“Now what are we gonna do with you?”

* * *

The musician lost a finger, and Rosinante went down to the brig to apologize. Amidst a group of groans and coughs— disease ran with the rats under the deck— the old man’s eyes are clear. Two pinholes of light in the dark.

Giolla came with him, of course, stuck on babysitting duty once more. She held a handkerchief to her nose, “little young master, you really shouldn’t be coming down here…”

He ignored her, reaching forward and giving the man the paper box. He huffed out a hoarse and scratchy laugh as he opened it. Bandages and medicine.

“Ya sure it’s alright to give me this?”

The boy nodded, “I’m sorry you lost a finger.”

The musician stared back at him, before his hand moved. It was too quick for Rosinante to react. The paper box slapped him right in the face, and he can feel the chill of the ointment splatter across his face. Cooling, numbing. Thankfully, none got into his eyes, even if tears welled in them all the same. Stubbornly, he refused to let them fall, wiping the medicine away. Giolla gasped, her concerns muffled through perfumed cloth, and Rosi shook his head. It was fine.

“I don’t need your pity, demon spawn.” The man snarled. “Pirates made this hell. Just ‘cause ya saved a few of my digits, doesn’t grant you the right to saunter right down here and act all holier than thou.”

Rosi bowed his head, his golden hair falling forward to cover his eyes, “I’m sorry.”

The man scoffed, and for a moment, they were silent together. Giolla tugged at his collar insistently like a shepherd’s dog, calling him back to the herd.

“‘s just a finger.” The man finally said, the one unable to bear with the silence. Giolla stared at both of them, as if they were mad. “That man, the cap’n. That’s your da, right?”

Rosinante nodded, a little too sure of himself. Pride leaked through, and the man grinned as if he smelled blood. The musician burst out laughing. Unlike his music, it was harsh, cruel, gleeful in the ruin of another.

“Oh, he’s lost more than just a finger already.” Muddled eyes looked at him, “if ya wanna save him, little saint, it’s far too late.”

Rosinante turned away, leaving Hades with no Orpheus to accompany him.

* * *

His father would drape the black feathered coat over him each morning, just before they leave their room together. It was their mantle, their wings that had been broken. 

Each night, after they shed their feathers, Doflamingo would hold him to his chest, and tell him stories.

It was a habit leftover from his younger years, when he couldn’t sleep.

“There is a city on the Red Line, where all the false gods lived.” He would begin, and Rosinante would press an ear to his father’s roaring heartbeat. Sanguine coursing through his veins, making his soul burn as warm as fire, barely contained within flesh and bone. “The city’s cobblestones were paved with gold, and they did not even need to walk on it. Instead, they rode on the backs of collared giants. Things who used to be men, but forced down onto their knees for eternity, forced to do the labour of the gods. The gods themselves never had to do anything at all. In fact, they moved so little, they resembled pigs more than humans.”

Rosinante knew by then that his father wasn’t really talking about gods.

“Everyday, they did nothing but gorge themselves on truffles and caviar, purchase gold and silks to adorn themselves and their houses. Where do you think they get all this money from, hm, Rosi?”

Rosi knew the correct answer.

“It was given to them.”

“That’s right.” Doflamingo murmured, “they were descendents of great men, you see. And so by birthright, they were entitled to luxury. An entire legacy of it. By simply being born, they were allowed happiness.”

Rosinante felt the gaze on him before his chin was lifted up to greet that cold and cruel smile.

“That same blood runs in our veins.” His father’s thumb pressed against the pulse on his neck. Enough for him to feel light-headed. Enough for him to hear the thudding of his own heart in syncopation with Doflamingo’s. Ichor against ichor. “We have the same rights, the same history. And they drove us out of that paradise. Our promised land. Do you think that's fair? Do you think that's the justice gods have?”

Rosinante shook his head. Yet for all of his Father’s talk of land, all Rosinante had ever known and loved was the sea. The rocking of the waves, the salt of the breeze that clumped his hair and feathers together, the little garden that he shielded from storms and winds and weather shifts of the Grand Line.

But of course, the sea in all its infinite mysteries, was never enough for Doflamingo.

“I’ll take us home one day, Rosi.” He said. “Then you will see— the real Mariejois. Our motherland. That’s where we belong. We’re dragons, you and I.”

Rosinante closed his eyes, and he was already there.

* * *

Animals were rare in Spider Miles. There were more rats than cats, more pigeons in the air than parrots in cages. Rosi liked them, liked to follow them, chase them into the corners of the city. Pavement and harsh concrete corners scuffed his skin, and denizens who were wise enough to recognize a feathered coat steered clear away from him.

A Gretel without Hansel, he left raven feathers in his wake for his brother to follow.

* * *

For a moment, instinctively, Sengoku thought he saw a beast. The fluff of the black feathered coat made him seem bigger than he really was, like a cobra’s flare. It was natural to be scared of the dark, to be scared of feathered vultures that carried carrions.

But this boy was not a vulture. And though Sengoku could not see his eyes behind golden hair, he knew them to be kind underneath. It was the way the boy pushed forward, slowly, as if  _ he _ was the one who could scare the other.

“Y-You dropped this, sir.”

It was his wallet, still fat with cash. No pickpocket, then. 

“Where are your parents, kid?” He asked, “it’s getting late, let me walk you home.”

The kid shook his head. Instead, he stared at Sengoku’s white uniform, the golden lapels on his shoulders, in contrast to the loose clothing that he wore underneath. He’s seen those uniforms stained with red, littered on navy decks. “Are you a marine, mister? A lieutenant?”

“Vice-admiral, actually.” He smiled, rubbing the back of his head to humble himself a little bit.

“Does that mean you’re strong?” He asked. So typical of a boy his age, despite his strange clothing. The kid eyed him up and down once more, “you’re not carrying a weapon.”

“You don’t need weapons to be strong.” Sengoku grinned, offering the kid a rice cracker. “Have you heard of Garp the Fist?”

* * *

The rice crackers were really good, salty and perfect with tea. For a moment, Rosinante let himself be whisked away to a fantasy world. A real fairytale this time, not the cruel and twisted stories his Father told him. Not the ones where men were more meat than flesh, where the worth of a human being was already determined by their birth. There were those deserving. In the vice-admiral’s stories, there was valour and honour, justice. In Sengoku’s world, it seemed, a small cut on his own finger did not equate to another’s loss of one.

In Sengoku’s world, villages did not cower or flee in fear when they landed. Men did not kill to sate their sadism, like Diamante, nor did they scramble for power, like Trebol. It was a world as far away as Mariejois, perhaps even further.

The strings wind around him, sharp enough to cut. But instead, they are sinking into his skin, his wrists, becoming part of him. Rosinante shot up from his seat on the bench, and Sengoku stared at him, half-way through a carefree laugh of his.

“Kid?”

“I have to go.” He said, his moves stiff, every bit of him fighting, to just stay a little longer. Like a stubborn child, asking for one more bedtime story.  _ Not yet. _ He turned, ever so slightly, his body trembling, because it would be rude to not to say goodbye. “Thank you, Mr. Vice Admiral. I hope we never meet again.”

And then, for his sake, Rosinante ran.

* * *

“What did I tell you about talking to strangers, Rosi?” Doflamingo’s tone was syrup sweet as his hand rested on top of his son’s head, trailing down to catch a tear. He lifted the boy up, pressing a kiss against where it hurt. Just like he did when he was a toddler.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“If you knew it was wrong, why did you do it?” He sank his fingers deep into small thighs, almost enough to bruise, and only managed to stop when he heard that small whimper from his boy. But he knew Rosinante had no answers.

“Don’t listen to their lies, Rosi.” He said, “you’re better than that.  _ We _ are better than that. They’re nothing but dogs that should serve us.”

Rosinante winced, his heart too gentle, too kind. Doflamingo narrowed his eyes. It was too virtuous for this world. And not for the first time, Doflamingo congratulated himself on his prescience for bringing Rosinante with him.

Without him, how would his little Corazon survive in this cruel world?

“Trust me, Rosi, you’re gonna be better off without them.” He murmured, pressing a kiss to the tip of small ears. If it wasn’t Sengoku “the Buddha”, Doflamingo would have painted the town red with marine blood for just  _ touching _ what was his.

“Next marine you talk to, I’ll gut him alive.”

* * *

_ I hope we never meet again. _

The rice cracker fell from his lap onto the ground, the brown almost the same colour as the dirt. 

Sengoku stared, baffled, at the little raven flying home.

Crushed underneath a hurried heel.

**Author's Note:**

> just to clarify, this is an au where:
> 
> Rosi was born in the North Blue around the time when Doflamingo was ten, and Doffy killed their father long before Rosi could remember. So Doffy essentially becomes the Father (and calls himself as such) of Rosi, because Donquixote Homing is dead to him.
> 
> thank you for reading! you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/EliUndertrance) screaming about doflacora.


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